Us
by Lilianae
Summary: Things that happen before the third time Naruto and Gaara don't say goodbye. Sequel to my story 'Cookie Chips'.
1. Chapter 1

**Title:** Us  
**Series:** Naruto  
**Rating:** K+  
**Warnings:** spoilers for up to manga chapter 299 and Shippuuden episode 45 (not much after ch 281 and ep 32, but just to be safe), may cause damage to your teeth  
**Pairings:** Gaara and Naruto friendship  
**Setting:** canonverse, first arc of Shippuuden (you know the one)

* * *

From that distance, in the dark and over the flickering flames, his expression was difficult to name. He sat in the ring around the fire with his back straighter than the situation would have warranted, surrounded by smiles and chatter, and careful hands patting him on the shoulders.

He gave nods, a word here or there, and each was accepted and treasured.

Accepted, treasured –included. No longer feared by his own. Naruto couldn't have been happier for him.

As his fellow Konohans wandered around the campsite recounting their recent experiences to each other and their allies, he felt content to observe Gaara being welcomed back (or perhaps simply welcomed) among his people. The sight of the other boy alive and well was soothing, and, as he had discovered during the first hours of the trip, necessary, to keep him from worrying his friend was anything _but_ alive and well.

Arms folded to pillow his head against the itchy bark, Naruto continued to watch the pale face regain the little color it normally had, occasionally wondering about the increasingly less glazed blue-green eyes glancing around the crowd in search. He wondered no longer, when they found their target.

Naruto smiled to aknowledge the eye contact. Gaara's only response was to wring himself to his feet as the nearest Suna shinobi rushed to help him, tell them something that looked like politely declining, and force his legs to carry him in his direction. Naruto jumped up and caught him less than half-way there.

"Should you be walking?" he huffed as they sat down by the tree he had been leaning against.

"Should you be quiet and alone?"

Naruto let his hand slide from that slightly shaky arm a second time that day, with more reluctance than the first. "Didn't want to be a third wheel," he said with a feeble chuckle. "You looked so happy surrounded by your people I'd be just getting in the way."

Gaara shook his head, and neither of them felt the need to specify which question or statement that answered. There was a moment's silence, their gazes wandering to the small movement of Gaara's hands as he flexed his fingers.

Some faces from around the fire peeked their way, but soon turned back, assured their Kazekage was safe enough that they could concentrate on celebrating him in his absence.

"So," Naruto reopened the conversation through a soft smile, "you got there."

"I had a head start; there was an opening," Gaara explained.

The abrupt laughter made Naruto sputter a bit. "A head... the hell you did!" He quickly quieted down when his friend's face was completely serious. "I mean, come on. You beat the odds, Gaara. It's… _you're_ amazing! I could be the Fifth, too, if that was all it took, but am I? You… you always had it even worse than me, didn't you…" His voice trailed off into a whisper, and he had to look away from the eyes that were staring at him about as wide as they had when they had first opened that day. He sighed, and forced himself to continue.

"Anyway, I didn't mean just getting the Hat before I did –and believe me, I _will_ get one– "

He wasn't sure if he saw the red head nod slightly from the corner of his eye, but he was clinging to the thought that he had.

"It's…" He pursed his lips together, in search of words to put it into.

"It's what the Hat is for," Gaara finished, and Naruto knew they meant the same thing. Two and a half years, and he still got him.

He would have been lying if he said Gaara had been constantly on his mind since the last time they met, but now that he had him near again, Naruto understood he had been deprived. He didn't know what he would have done if this really had been taken away from him permanently.

A pale hand reached towards him, but quickly withdrew. Just like that, Gaara suddenly felt to be further away.

"Naruto."

It was a whisper, with a tint of distress. Naruto eagerly leaned closer to hear, and to take back the distance he had been too quick to imagine between them. He should have remembered they also shared the insecurities.

Gaara curled up a little more than he probably was aware of doing. "Do you think I'm rotten?"

Did he… WHAT?

Naruto's instant reply came in the loudest whisper possible.

"NO!! Gaara, listen to me, don't you ever believe that! If anyone, I should– " He saw his friend lift his hand again and smell it. "_Oh!_ Um…"

"I still can't feel some of my fingers," Gaara continued, and looked up. "How long was I dead?"

A chill ran down Naruto's spine. "Not that long, give it time," he assured, hoping with every fiber of his being that he was telling the truth. "And if any… _damage_ was done already," he grimaced out, "I'm sure the old lady fixed it, right?"

Gaara breathed out what could be a sigh of relief. Naruto would be eternally grateful to Chiyo for that he was breathing at all –for being there to cover for his unforgivable mistake.

Speaking of fixing damage, their entourage to Suna was full of medics, Sakura-chan included. It struck him that instead of consulting them, the Kazekage was whispering his concerns to his unqualified ear.

"Hey, it's okay not to be okay after what you went through, Gaara," he said, still in a low voice. "You know, Kakashi-sensei usually needs days of bed rest after using his Sharingan a lot." He nodded in the direction of the tree his teacher was slumped against, looking like he wished he could walk on his own enough to escape from whatever conversation Gai-sensei was keeping from ending. "But…" He thought about the smiles he masked hurt with. Not the ones that came naturally; the ones he had rehearsed in front of a mirror as an eleven-year-old, so he could force them on to convince both other people and himself that sticks and stones… "I think I understand."

He reached out his hand in turn, and hesitated, leaving it hovering over the other's that was resting on the ground again. "Which fingers?"

The hand recoiled a little, but then relaxed. "The three most ulnar ones," Gaara muttered.

"The what?"

The Kazekage gave a small smirk. "Pinky, ring and middle finger," he said, and turned his right hand palm up in surrender. Naruto picked it up, and started rubbing the fingers gently.

He hoped the limited lighting was hiding what he could feel as heat on his face, when it started to sink in that this was the first time they had touched skin-to-skin, if you didn't count the headbutt and two punches after Gaara's sand armor had sloughed off. It shouldn't have mattered, because he touched people all the time. He never missed an opportunity, in fact, because he could never know how many chances he would get to have other people welcome it, and he had learned not to expect many.

But Gaara –his existence in the first place, and that he was still with him now, was a miracle. And the loudest, brashest and crudest ninja to have lived or not, you treat such things with due humility. Touching him was unreal, and yet proof that he _was_ real.

He couldn't be sure if the stiffness of those fingers was now more from the rigor mortis or because Gaara had to be even more unused to being touched.

"Why should you think yourself rotten, too?" the miracle suddenly spoke.

The rubbing ceased. Naruto looked up to see the scarred brow furrowed and thin lips pressed into a confused frown. He wished Gaara hadn't caught that.

"I… I couldn't save you," he confessed the obvious, just holding the hand in his and glad to feel one of the previously numb fingers move a little. "I let you die."

The blue-green eyes narrowed more. "I'm sure you gave your best effort."

"I did…" The knowledge of that hurt, too, because it hadn't been enough, but it wasn't what he had meant. "Now, anyway."

Gaara waited. Naruto knew there was no escape of admitting it, and he wouldn't accept one anyway.

"We practically lived together for three months, and it never occurred to me to warn you. You and your village could have been better prepared," he said, his gaze at his feet. "Of course I already knew Akatsuki is after me for Kyuubi, but I didn't bring that up, I didn't realize I should have."

"You couldn't have been sure they wanted more than one demon," Gaara spoke in an unidentifiable tone.

"No, I should have been," Naruto insisted, his voice rising a little in determination to get his point across. "Because you know what –we're the same, remember?" He turned to look Gaara in the eye again. "When they target me, they target you. When they attack you they attack me. When they… when they hurt one of us– " He leaned back a little, realizing he was staring at his friend with an expression that had to have gotten pretty threatening, and that their faces were an inch apart. He took a deep breath to calm himself. "–they hurt us."

The steady sound he had been subconsciously lending half an ear to throughout the conversation broke its rhythm with a shallow inhale and a pause.

"The jinchuuriki?"

"Us," he corrected. "So I should have known."

Naruto leaned back against the tree and released his friend's hand –it was much warmer now anyway, and all five fingers were moving fine. He couldn't help the ridiculous feeling that they had just had a quarrel, and were both waiting for the other to apologize. He heard his name said again (he wondered if he had noticed when exactly Gaara had stopped calling him 'you there' and started using it).

His miracle was looking at him like they really had had a quarrel. "I have been constantly alert for attempts on my life since I was six years old," Gaara reminded him. "My village is built to defend itself from outside threats; when there isn't a human enemy it's still at never-ending war with the surrounding terrain. I never sleep, and neither does Suna. We were prepared."

"I'm sorry," Naruto tried, "I didn't mean it like– " But Gaara interrupted him. He was not the only one determined to be heard when he had something to say, after all.

"That we fell is not your fault. But for that we will get up again, consider yourself responsible."

Now it was Naruto who was staring wide-eyed at his friend. Gaara's gaze was unrelenting, but not hostile. He was willing him to stop pitying himself.

To stop pitying _them_.

"Okay," Naruto sighed with a faint smile. How could he argue with that? Gaara relaxed, and they settled to sit quietly side by side again. Many of the others had gotten into their sleeping bags already, and an exchange of people around the fire told him of a change of guards. "So, you never sleep, huh? What about now?" he asked, on a whim for something to talk about.

"I should be able to," Gaara considered. "It will take some adjusting, though, and I'm not tired right now."

"Really?" The latter half of the word turned into a yawn, apparently summoned by his wish _not_ to seem tired either. He didn't want to sleep when his friend was sitting there awake, and could be having a conversation with him instead of watching him snore yet again. "Then maybe I just need to bore you to de– " He almost clamped a hand on his mouth. Of all the idioms...

But Gaara nodded, hint of a warm smile forming on his lips.

"If you would. Tell me of your travels."

A wide grin stretched whiskered cheeks. There would be no end in sight once he got started on that.


	2. Chapter 2: And of Me

**Chapter Two: And of Me**

"Hey, you know what, I just thought of the perfect souvenir for you!"

Listening to the reassuring sound of Naruto's voice summarize two and a half years into a half-an-hour training montage, the young Kazekage had learned he was capable of nostalgia after all. He had been missing this bedtime ritual, even if he now being the one their conversation was meant to lull into sleep made him more than a little nervous.

He had been in states very close to sleep before, and his subconscious was not a place he looked forward to visiting again. He would soon find out how much of the decor was his lodger's doing, and if the demon's absence would make it any cozier, or perhaps just emptier.

His eyelids had been steadily gaining weight, but a few rapid blinks every now and then kept them from staying closed. He was not tired at all, he had decided, and did not care to be.

And as if reading his thoughts –Gaara wouldn't be surprised if he could actually do that– Naruto had just now slowed down and focused his attention on his audience again.

"I hate it when I realize things with, like, a year's delay, though... It's too late now." The tanned forehead momentarily bare of a Leaf symbol creased as he forced the memory to emerge. "There were these really pretty things with hanging strings and beads and feathers and stuff, dream something…"

"Dreamcatchers?"

Naruto turned to face him and nodded, surprised, but still smiling.

"I saw things like that at a festival market, during a mission," Gaara explained. In that foreign town he had been but a potential customer with no reputation, and the seller had been intrusive enough to make a few details stick in his memory. It had been refreshing to be treated as a normal, approachable person, so he had allowed the sales speech, and even haggled the price a little to see how it felt. "Supposedly they ward off nightmares."

"Yeah," Naruto said with a slight groan. "Ero-sennin said they're a hoax and refused to waste his money on any. I bet he was just being stingy, though. I really have no idea if those things work, they could have some sort of genjutsu seal or whatever. Did you get one?"

Gaara shook his head. He hadn't had any use for it at the time.

"Oh. Well."

He felt his friend adjust his position and draw the blanket a little tighter around the both of them. Gaara wasn't cold, and he noticed this brought them closer together, but he let it happen.

Naruto yawned again, and this time he immediately followed, remembering an old superstition about the act but discarding it. He knew perfectly well how it felt to have your soul escape through your mouth (and eyes, he might add), and this was far from it.

Now that he thought about it –he hadn't yawned much before, had he. Not even when he had been beyond tired, and it had never been 'contagious' for him, as it was generally said to be for people.

This must a good sign.

"What were yours like?" he finally asked.

He heard a heavy sigh, and, aware of that he was keeping his friend from dropping another sore subject, he let him take his time to put his unpleasant dreams into words. He needed to know this, and Naruto seemed to understand that. There was no reluctance in the voice that answered.

"Lonely," the blond said, before giving it a little more thought. "They almost stopped after I started making friends, but I guess around the same time… they changed." The blue eyes were gazing straight forward, focused on some random point of no importance as he spoke, and Gaara recognized it as distancing yourself from your words. He could still recall staring at those same eyes while reciting his past, back when _they_ had seemed like a thing of no importance. "And, well… especially while I was away from everyone, I had a lot of dreams of losing the people I'd already gained."

There was a rustling sound, and through the blanket he could see Naruto's hand rise to his chest. He didn't seem aware of it even when it grabbed a fistful of the orange jacket.

"Mostly it was that bad things happened to them. Worse things, if they were really close to me… But, sometimes it was them, who…" Gaara was only a little surprised to realize he had mirrored the gesture, and what they both had reached for. For Naruto, there was no visible scar, but it was the wrong side for the target to be his heart. "…who… you know."

He did.

"Anyway," the blond shrugged with deliberation, flashing a wry smile, "I guess it helps to know what you're afraid of, or what hurts you, so those things don't surprise you in dreams." Gaara nodded. He would keep that in mind. "It's not pleasant, but you learn to tell them apart from reality to some extent."

"Even the ones based on real events?"

"Yeah." The blanket tightened around them a little more. "I had a pretty bad one about you last night, you know."

Gaara flinched and turned to look at his friend's eyes again, searching them carefully. 'Which kind', he wanted to ask.

"It lasted longer than I slept, too –the whole following day, almost. I think that might have been the worst one so far." Naruto gave another sigh, and this time his breath came out shaky. "But even that ended eventually. You always wake up, Gaara, no matter how bad it is. And most dreams aren't too bad at all. Some make you want to stay asleep forever even though you can't."

Gaara took a while to absorb this information. He knew about dreams, and had watched people sleep (most recently right now). He had seen his siblings, Naruto, and even a few of his victims twitch, smile, whimper or mutter in their slumber. He had even read about dream symbolism. This, however, he decided was the most preparing advice he had gotten for the function.

Naruto would be sleeping as well, but it was relieving to know he would be there by his side this first time. Though his own shinobi had his trust and respect as well, now, it was this knowledge that made him feel almost _safe_ about letting go of his defenses, much more than the expertly trained and alert shadows guarding the camp did. He could do this.

Then something else Naruto had said occurred to him. "You didn't mention where you saw the dreamcatchers."

Naruto chuckled lightly, wiping his eyes. "You still want one?"

Gaara shook his head. "Just wondering."

"Okay… it was this town in… actually, not too far from here! We're still in River Country, right? A little south of Katabami Kinzan."

He hazarded a guess at the town's name.

Naruto nodded.

He said the name of the festival.

Naruto nodded with enthusiasm, and Gaara had to follow up, "Did you say… it was last year you were there?"

Naruto started to nod again, but was still and quiet for a moment. Then his eyes grew wide. "No way!!"

All he could do was stare back.

"I trained for most of the time, but I hit the market stands at the end of the last day of the festival," Naruto whispered.

"We tracked down our target on that day. Temari and Kankuro wanted to relax after a job well done," he whispered back.

"August twenty-third."

Gaara nodded. "It was her birthday."

"We could've met!"

"Yes…"

"I could have…"

"I… the moon…" He wasn't sure where that sentence was going when he started it, but it was now becoming increasingly important to let Naruto know something about that mission. "It was full, and I had just torn three people into pieces…"

"Ero-sennin wasn't with me, because he was still injured," Naruto said, not interrupting him, but interlacing his sentences with his own. A song they both knew the lyrics of. "He never told me what happened."

"I didn't want to ruin it for her by letting them notice and worry."

"And I can't help but wonder if maybe I had something to do with it."

"Or fear again... they trust me now."

"I couldn't ask. I still haven't."

"So I didn't go together with them."

"I wish there had been..."

"If… if we…"

And Naruto started laughing.

It was unlike any of his laughs Gaara had heard before –completely uncontrolled and almost indiscernible from crying– but it was beautiful. He wanted nothing more than to return the open display of emotion in some way. Before he quite figured out how, and before his mind even had time to register it, however, his body had gone rigid again because suddenly Naruto wasn't beside him anymore but _around_ him.

Directly above them, a sandaled foot shifted on a branch as a shadow sensed its master's shock.

"N-Naruto?"

"Gaara, I…" Naruto mumbled into his shoulder, traces of his warm breath reaching through the fabric of the coat and making him shiver. "I'm so glad we _did_ meet… I don't even want to think of what if I hadn't found you."

Though thoroughly stunned, Gaara managed a short glance upwards, to tell the Suna shinobi stationed in the tree they were leaning against that he didn't need assistance. Then he turned his attention back to the boy he was currently wrapped in.

"Naruto."

The sound of his name made his friend rub his cheek against his neck, which caused another shiver. He had been pushing his limits all evening, amazed that another, living person could be allowed this close so naturally. Nothing about the quick, frightened touches of the nursemaids who had held his tiny body as far away from their own as possible, or his siblings' hesitant, unaccustomed gestures of affection much later, had trained him for the tactile hyposensitization therapy Naruto seemed to have a way of making him accept.

Gaara tried to relax, telling himself this was safe, and that people did this. This was a hug.

He thanked all deities he could think of to be listening, that he was in such a weakened state that his normally quick reflexes hadn't lifted a single grain of sand off the ground. He didn't think he could have forgiven himself if he had let it deny him –_them_– this.

"Naruto," he tried again, his voice but a croak, "I told you, I don't blame you. It's alright…" The arms squeezed snugger around him.

"No, I don't mean just now," Naruto insisted, still breathing practically against his skin. "I'm glad you came into my life, Gaara."

By now his own breathing wasn't quite normal anymore, hitching almost frighteningly as something deep inside begun to unwind. His eyes burned with not quite pain, and he closed them. He knew he wouldn't be able to open them again in hours.

Naruto made no move to release him, but the radiating body heat and the pressure was curiously comfortable. With less effort that he would have thought was required, Gaara let himself go limp.

"I'm so glad you're staying," Naruto sobbed a whisper, and he couldn't say anything back, because his lips were pressed shut and his jaw was trembling.

Before falling fully asleep for the first time in his life, he remembered struggling against the shift in his level of consciousness, just in case he was now waking up instead.

--

Naruto truly was bad at goodbyes, and Gaara would have to admit, he was no better.

The first time they had parted ways, both of them had been too exhausted, physically and mentally, to consider whether any goodbyes should be said. Naruto had only just found out his friends hadn't died, and Gaara had only just found out everything he had been clinging to for the past six years was false. All they had managed was a smile and an apology, aimed at other people.

The second time, they had both known for months in advance it would have to happen, and had silently agreed to pretend it never would, living a while in a surreal in-between where promises of a lifetime, demon-hunting criminal organizations, and desert villages to win over faded to the background. The night before, they had gone to bed –Naruto to sleep, and Gaara to sit at his feet and watch, memorize, and wonder about the small movements of his eyelids– knowing that when the alarm clock sitting next to a photo of Team Seven went off, the three children of the Sand would have just passed the gates. They said good night instead.

The third time, Naruto was there when Gaara woke up, one shoulder numb again and adorned with a drool stain, and one of the blond's arms squished between his back and the tree trunk in a way that was uncomfortable for both of them. They said good morning. And until Suna was in sight, hardly anything else.

They weren't avoiding each other, Gaara understood. Even when after getting him to the care of his village's hospital, Naruto only came by a few times to check with the medics that he was still alright, and merely gave him a passing smile, which he returned, there was nothing awkward about it.

He was staying. Naruto was staying. Where would they be in a hurry to?

In the afternoon, it of course came up that _physically_, Naruto wouldn't be, and though they had both known that yet again, it couldn't be helped. It did suddenly feel like there _was_ a hurry, to say everything that still needed to be said, to do everything that still needed to be done. They looked at each other across that desk Gaara had fought to sit behind, and which now acted as an unwanted barrier. He felt that if it wasn't for that, Naruto might have touched him again, and he knew he would not have minded.

The visit to the grave was loitering. Chiyo-baasama would understand, he hoped, if their thoughts couldn't be completely with her at that moment.

So little time after all. So much to say –and why wasn't any of it coming out?

At the gates it was a matter of minutes anymore, perhaps seconds, and Naruto was back to running away. He was _getting_ away. And Gaara understood he didn't have to wait for Naruto to touch him first, and that it wasn't even fair if only one of them could reach out to the other.

That was what still needed to be done.

Right before he let go –physically– he said what still needed to be said.

"I'll be there when you reach it." Every step of the way, as Naruto had been for him, and would be still. That way was theirs to pave together. "The Hat, and what it's for."

Naruto's smile grew, from something not unlike a simper.

"I know," he assured, before running off to catch up with the others.

The grip tightened for a moment before it was gone.

"After all, you're part of it."


End file.
